civil servant number 1

A few weeks ago, I was a potential juror for a murder trial. At first, I was sort of excited to see our justice system in action, and secretly happy to get off work, especially when I learned that the justice system, due to very long and frequent, yet oddly spaced breaks, only works approximately 4 hours a day, rather than the standard 8. What could be better than getting off work to alternately sit in a courthouse conducting sociological analyses and walk around Redwood City, right? Oh, how I was very, very wrong. First of all, sitting in the courtroom for extended periods of time is really hard. We weren’t allowed to listen to music, read, sleep, or think about anything other than the questioning of the other potential jurors. This is because if we were called up, we were going to be asked similar questions. The rules of the court were enforced by a very stern bailiff (so unlike Bull and the crew from night court) who spent the duration of her work day watching the audience, springing into action when someone nodded off or looked like they otherwise weren’t paying attention.

Time moves very slowly once the initial thrill of watching the action dies down. After 2 and a half days of waiting outside the courtroom, waiting inside the courtroom, waiting while secret conversations between the judge and attorneys took place, and listening to the judge repeat for the hundredth time, “We understand that you have strong opinions, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. We’re just asking you to take information that is presented in the trial and apply it to a set of rules that I give you and return a verdict. Can you do that?”, I truly missed work, with actual things to think about. But the coup de grace of the entire experience was the moment when the jury was selected and those 12 people WERE SMILING!!! They were smiling upon being picked to decide the future of another human being and decide if he gets to be free and go to birthday parties and family reunions and eat hot dogs, or if he doesn’t get to do any of those things and has to spend many years in a harsh and depressing cell. What is wrong with the world that the announcement of being a murder trial juror would inspire smiling? I honestly can’t think of a bigger burden. My mind was not at all eased upon their collective reaction, especially since I got to hear the thoughts and feelings of those 12 people and I would not trust them to decide my future, I’ll tell you that right now. In the end, civic responsibility was accomplished (to the tune of a $37.92 check to this lady).

astronomy springs forth from the darkness of the night and of the soul

This winter felt extremely busy, or maybe winter just sucks and a disproportionate amount of sleeping occurs, thereby making the already small amount of usable daytime diminish, in turn causing a general feeling akin to being rushed. Whatever the reality of the light-deprived months, it is now mostly over, and I’ve got more free time on my hands. This means that I can now concentrate on more important things like photographing my cat, taking walks, planting a container garden, talking on the phone, reading more than half of a book, finishing the (now multi-year) family photo albums, general laziness and most importantly, getting reacquainted with my blog! One of the causes of winter busy-ness was the astronomy course I took at the local junior college. I took it as a requirement to teach 11 year olds, and boy I am glad! It was without a doubt the best class I’ve EVER taken. It was so much more than just picking up cool astronomy facts. In this class, all of my knowledge of science congealed into something I would like to call “a higher plane”. It was amazing, as the entirety of what I learned in chemistry and physics fell into place. I relearned Newton’s laws, and finally understand what Einstein is all about. After taking countless science classes at a really good university and walking away with very little understanding of anything, I have a completely new perspective on it all. Learning is so much better now!

The best part of astronomy was our text book, which has awesome pictures and stories of amazing astronomy ladies. For so long, they weren’t allowed to have tenure track positions or fancy accolades, but they did totally rad things! Here are a few:

Annie Cannon: She went to college, but then had to spend her 20’s taking care of her parents. When they died, she got a job at Harvard classifying stellar spectra. They hired a lot of smart women because they were cheap labor and did work that their male peers considered beneath them. She basically helped develop the relationship between star color and temperature (also related to the elements that are present in the star), all because she spent time doing the “woman’s work” of cataloguing and organizing. She was the first woman to get an honorary degree from Oxford, and then, at the age of 75, she was granted tenure at the place where she’d worked her entire career (Harvard).

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: She was the first woman to get a PhD in astronomy and her dissertation proved that stars (like the sun) are mostly made of H and He. She was the first person to determine that the sun was not made up of the same stuff as the earth.

Jocelyn Bell: she discovered pulsars, but then her advisor got the Nobel prize! This is considered one of the biggest injustices in astronomy! Nonetheless, she still got lots of other awards, and is always mentioned along with him so that he’ll never truly stand alone in that discovery

And who could ever forget Jill Tartar, the inspiration for the book (and fine film) Contact (which coincidentally I saw during the summer of ’97 in the sweltering heat of Chicago with two fine ladies with whom I no longer speak due to the passage of time and the inconvenience of distance, but have some awesome memories of, the most pertinent right now being the fact that Bruce Willis was in the theater with us when we saw Contact. I guess this is a tangential shout-out to Lauren Crabtree and Ashley Coats). Not only is she the main lady behind SETI, but she also named the kind of stars known as brown dwarfs.

In conclusion: How does a solar system hold up it's pants? With an asteroid belt.

flickr updates

I've been neglecting my flickr account for about a year now, even going so far as to let my pro status lapse, thereby limiting my photos to 200! This weekend, emboldened by a brand spanking new to-do list, I added all of my pictures from the past year, including the rest of my christmas 2005 brazil trip (why I stopped uploading pictures before I was done with the set I have no idea), the trip to costa rica, and random pictures of the beach, pumpkin, seals, etc. In going through my photos, I discovered this awesome one that went unnoticed until yesterday. Check out all the amazing and varied spirals! New career: tropical treeologist.

worst (three) week(s) ever (again)

The last three weeks have been mind-blowingly awful. In addition to the three days of jury duty selection, the not-so-endearing “California $1,000 car tune-up”, and horrible insomnia, Pumpkin ate some of the recalled cat food and went into kidney failure again. Lest you think this a relapse from the last time a money-hungry-corporation-trying-to-increase-profits-through-shady-shortcuts-or-business-maneuvers caused her to go into kidney failure, I will say that not only did she recover completely the last time, but she didn’t start to get sick until 2 cans into the recalled food. I took her to the vet two weeks ago, when the news first broke, and after she hadn’t eaten for a day.

Dropping her off at the clinic initially was difficult (due to pumpkin’s disregard for the animal medical profession), yet strangely comforting (because all of the same employees were still working in their same capacities, and it sort of felt like I was returning her to the warm bosom of health and care). Most people remembered pumpkin from her last visit. And, much like the last time, she had to be sedated in order for them to insert the IV catheter. Sweet as southern tea she may be, but not to strangers trying to stick stuff in her veins. When I went to visit her that first night, a little part of my soul died. The vet told me that the IV was difficult to insert because there was some scarring from her last hospital stint. The thought of my beloved companion developing scar tissue and possibly dying as a result of humanity was infuriating and difficult to deal with. It was at this moment that I realized I AM like my father, ex-pat tendencies and all, as I wanted nothing more than to live on the top of a mountain, breathing clean air, eating vegetables grown with my own two hands and tending to various flocks of animals, most of whom would presumably die of natural causes.

This time has certainly been less excruciating than a year and a half ago simply because I’ve been ever vigilant about petting and cooing at her and generally not taking her presence for granted over the past year (I think cat near-death experiences do that). As I sat in the waiting room of the emergency clinic, I was able to keep my cool by reminding myself that I’d gotten a wonderful extra year with my sweet kitty. This enabled me to play a different role in the animal emergency clinic community from the one I played last time. I spoke openly and with encouragement to many of the other cat owners who had the same problem as I’m now officially a pro at dealing with acute renal failure (ARF) in cats. I offered my story of prior complete recovery as a beacon of hope to those who’d never dealt with serious sickness in their animal friend. I told them the latest news from the www and passed along the details of my conversation with IAMS wherein they assured me that all medical expenses would be paid by Proctor and Gamble.

After two days in the 24-hour hospital and three more days on IV fluids at the regular vet, pumpkin had not improved. She wasn’t eating and her blood toxins weren’t decreasing, which indicates that the kidneys can’t clean the blood as they are made to do. This was very different from last time, and so, distraught, I firmly told my vet that I wanted to take her home rather than let her die in an uncomfortable hospital with an annoying IV in her arm. So I brought her home to administer sub Q fluids into her back twice a day and help ease the transition into the animal afterlife affectionately known as the “rainbow bridge”. When we got home, she didn’t purr and could barely walk. I laid on the floor with her and cried really, really hard for most of the night. I didn’t go into work the next day, instead choosing to sit at home all day with her and offset my depressed mind with the entire second season of Laguna Beach (not a good idea when your anger is directed and capitalism and the coldness of corporate America). By the end of the day, she was surprisingly better (though I was feeling worse, completely out-of-sorts and hopeless from my LB marathon). She was walking a bit faster and showing more spark/energy. She still wasn’t eating that much, but she purred again and seemed happier. Her improvement continued every day and after four days of being home, I took her back to the vet for more bloodwork. Her toxin levels had dropped in half, indicating that her kidneys were working, albeit slowly. It seemed completely unlikely to me that the intense flushing of her system wouldn’t work, but sub Q fluids would. Natan then put forth the idea that I cured her with my love, which is probably the nicest thought to come out of this whole ordeal. It’s in line with something that I totally believe in—the whole mind-body connection. I watched a show on PBS where they did all these really cool studies on stress and recovery from wounds and proved that the mental state of a patient really does affect the kind of recovery they have. Some insurance companies even send out meditation tapes before their clients go into surgery because the more relaxed the patient, the quicker the recovery and the quicker the recovery, the less money the company has to pay. Pumpkin’s still not fully recovered and we don’t know if she will and what her long-term life will be like. For now, I have to insert an 18 gauge needle into her back twice a day and play the role of animal nurse. But, as long as she’s home and the recipient of intense people love, I have no doubt she’s getting the best care available.